Quicksand
by KrisEleven
Summary: The unmagic I hold within me is like quicksand and I watch as it drags you, one after the other, into the darkness of its depths.


**A/N** This was written for the Ficmas Exchange on Fief Goldenlake. The lovely mistrali wanted a dark!fic focused on the seductive and addictive affects of the unmagic. The nameless mage from Magic Steps holds the point of view in this story, and each scene is speaking to a different person in a different section of his life.

* * *

"Mine could not be a story about the building of character, but about its erosion..."  
― Gonzalo Munévar, _The Master Of Fate_

* * *

There was a time, before there were any of you.

I was just me and there was light and laughter and family. There was a dog sleeping by the front door, and livestock in the fields. There was a warm place to sleep, where I woke up blearily, someone there whispering in my ear that the sun was rising and there was work to be done.

That was before you. That was before all of you.

But, even so, there was still me, and so there was darkness.

There has always been a corner of me that was willing to eat up all the light I gave it, all that and more until all of me was consumed by the emptiness. I was not always aware of it, but it was always there, lingering, like the quicksand in the middle of a quiet corner of the marshes. It would wait until it was stumbled upon, but once it grabbed hold it would never, ever, let go.

Perhaps the laughter and light and love kept it at bay, kept it hidden so no one could find it and step in and begin that slow descent into the nothingness it hid and was.

But then you came, the first of you.

You were a pirate.

* * *

You watch me from across the hold, dull-eyed as I wipe the blood from my lip and look away. I have tried to run, again, and all you know is the incessant no, no, no, no of your rage.

You don't realize that the darkness has reached inside of you, grasping hold in all the scratches your greed and cruelty and anger has made on your inner light. I can see it, its hundreds of tendrils reaching from me to you, putting the light you had inside, before me, out. It had been a dim light, admittedly. There had been too much damage done to your soul by your own hand to allow you any protection from the darkness. You had a hundred nicks on its light by the time you attacked my family, looking for riches we didn't have.

But you found something. You found me, when the darkness inside me reached forward and saved my family. You realized quickly that I could be useful to you.

My unmagic realized quickly that it _liked_ being let outside to touch the light all around it, to draw more than just me into the depths it carried, the insatiable quicksand that _hungered_ now, instead of being content to wait for something to come across it. Now it sought out the light of the world. Every time you force me to use this power, it grows stronger and it is seeking out everything that makes you, _you_.

If I liked anything about you, I would warn you, I suppose.

Instead I sit back and watch you sink – the quicksand's around your chest now – oblivious and asking for more.

You are muttering to yourself, unaware that you have been caught in the grip of the unmagic. All you know is that I am useful, and I have tried to get away from you, and you must do something to stop it.

You tap the wicked blade against the table again, and I don't, don't, don't look. There must be something I can do to get away from this ship and you, back to the light and love I used to know. But it has been a long time and the darkness is seeping into me, as well. The more I use it, the more I lose, until I can remember the voice that used to whisper me awake but not the words. I can remember playing with siblings into twilight, but I cannot recall their faces. I can remember that I was more than this, a weapon of pirates, a tool and nothing more, but I realize I have forgotten my name.

The unmagic has been drawing more than just you into its darkness. I fear all that I have lost more than I fear you.

Almost.

You grab the back of my neck, forcing me to breathe into the bag you hold and as the dust – the salt? – within it gets caught in my inhale, the world starts to fade away in a pleasant buzz.

I hardly feel the blade as you set it against my leg.

I am gone from the world before you begin to cut.

The pain would come later, but you keep the dragonsalt close by, and me closer, and all the while the unmagic drags more of you into darkness.

* * *

You are different than the others, than the pirate who cut off my legs, but you are very much the same.

A long time ago, I think I dreamed that one day someone would take me away from those who had stolen me, that one day someone would find me and take me back to that place where I was happy, where my family lived.

If it was a dream I had ever thought would come true, then the unmgaic has stolen all but the faintest memory of it.

I think that may be the only kindness it has ever done me.

Now we are here, in Emelan, and you are already lost. I've watched as the unmagic begins to creep outside of the light inside you, through your eyes, across your skin. You don't understand why you cannot remember all that was once so important to you, but I do. I am watching as you sink in the quicksand as it covers more and more of you – up to your shoulders now – and every move you make takes you deeper within.

You should have taken me home. You should never have rescued me at all. Now you are as lost as I am.

You stare into the distance, seeing all the ways in which the world is disconnected, flailing, filled with empty space. You worry, on some level, about what this means for your _mission_ against the Rokats, your bloodbath, your pride in the Dihanur name, but it slips away into the darkness and falls, falls, falls away. It is gone before it can coalesce into something you can hold onto and remind yourself of who you were, once, all those little things that used to make you real, before the unmagic started taking it all away.

You used to like things and hate things and want things and need things but now there is just you and the unmagic.

And me. I am still here. But you see only the emptiness within.

I feel it the moment I am brought near the house, that web of emptiness you have drawn to catch us. I don't even think of warning the Dihanurs of the trap you have woven for us; the unmagic calls to me, and I have long since given up on influencing the world around me. Instead, I sit still in my bindings and feel the pull and call of the unmagic, until I see it, the bag in the middle of the floor. _That_ is something I want, the closest I can get to the emptiness that the unmagic offers everyone, everyone but me.

The Dihanurs are panicking now as you talk to them, and she thinks she is in control, but I feel your trap tighten and I already know that you have won, even if you don't... you don't _want _to? The difference between you and everyone I have known is enough to make me raise my head.

I look up from the bag of dragonsalt, from the sweetness of oblivion I hold in my hand and catch you staring at me from outside your web of unmagic. You are like me, then, you have shaped this thing to catch hold of us and I expect to see the blackness of your eyes, the unmagic catching hold of everything you are inside and dragging it away, drowning it in ink and emptiness.

Your eyes are bright, bright blue and they are filled with fear and determination, and you meet my gaze and they are filled with sadness and sympathy as you look at me. The unmagic has been all over you and you should have been lost, should have been dragged into the darkness, but instead the power of the light you wield has _pushed it all away_.

I start to laugh and cannot stop, even as the unmagic takes away the rest of what I am, dragging me into the abyss of beyond.

You are left in the world, alone and sad and brightbrightlight and it is the most beautiful thing I have known.


End file.
